12 LOCAL BUSINESS NEWS
Tech entrepreneur celebrates first year after crowdfunding values company at £1million By Adam Hignett adam@timesoftunbridgewells.co.uk
COULD Tunbridge Wells soon be seen as the birthplace of the next Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? It may appear a far-fetched notion, but one local start-up has already been valued at almost £1million, just 11 months after being established. In July, the Times profiled Ben Jeffries, the founder of tech company Influencer. The idea behind this new platform is to help brands promote their products to target audiences through the use of ‘influencers’ – celebrities, socialites and bloggers who have a far-reaching presence on social networking – in exchange for a service fee, a percentage of which is retained by Influencer. At the time, the 20 year old had already secured a major win when the agency of football legend Ronaldinho signed up to the company to help him expand his reach into the UK. And although this was a huge milestone for such a young company, the future of the business was never a sure thing, with Ben juggling the
responsibilities of a university placement at Shell and running the platform alone. ess than a year on, and things are certainly Less looking up for Ben and his business. He successfully won this year’s Young Start-up Talent competition in Kent before going on to secure £154,000 from crowdfunding in just 24 hours at the end of October. “It all happened a lot quicker than I expected,” Ben explained. “I thought it would take three weeks to raise that amount of money, and had put aside resources for a tough marketing campaign which I ended up not using at all.” In return for the funding, Ben relinquished 17 per cent of the equity in the business, effectively valuing it at just over £905,000. It is a figure that Ben admits may not reflect its true value at the moment: “I am a relatively modest person, and I think a lot of start-up values are quite inflated to reflect their potential. “So I don’t necessarily believe it is worth that much right now, but once the platform is built and it kicks off I think it will be. “The actual valuation itself Ben was not determined by me, Jeffries but by Crowdcube [an online investment firm] and
accountants. I didn’t just pluck a number out of the air, it was evaluated by people who know more about valuations than myself.” In order to fund further growth in the future, Ben expects he will return to crowdfunding in around a year’s time, but for less equity and ‘a larger amount’ of capital.
‘I’m still a one-man band, but once it is developed the company will be able to grow extremely rapidly’ This, he hopes, will allow him to broaden Influencer away from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and towards other social media sites, such as YouTube. In the meantime, at least £60,000 of what he has obtained through crowdfunding so far will go towards developing the software that will allow Influencer to flourish. At the moment, Ben has to manually pair those who want to advertise products with the people he believes will best be able to promote them. To do so, he uses a very rudimentary system based on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet which lists clients with ‘influencers’. This system, which is both extremely time-consuming and inefficient, very much hampers his ability to truly grow as only he can really operate it. His new platform, which is currently under construction, is being developed by a team in Shoreditch – the heart of the UK’s tech scene –
and promises to be fully automated so clients themselves can match with the influencers they think will be of most value directly. “At the moment, I am not taking on too many additional influencers until the platform is finished because I am cautious about taking on more than I can manage. I’m still a one-man band, but once it is developed the company will be able to grow extremely rapidly.” Apart from the new platform, some of the crowfunding money will go towards an advertising campaign, which to start with will utilise posters in the London Underground. He has been helped to get this far by his success at the Young Start-up Talent competition in Kent in September. By winning the Dragons’ Den-style event, against hundreds of other hopefuls, Ben secured £50,000-worth of products and services for his fledgling company. These services include legal advice from Cripps and help with accounting from Crowe Clark Whitehill, as well as branding assistance from a host of creative enterprises. Although he is wary of ‘closing any doors’ on his options, Ben said he is unlikely to return to the University of Bath after his year off, although he praised them for being ‘incredibly supportive’ of his project. But with a business that is already paying the young entrepreneur ‘a reasonable’ salary, an office on The Pantiles and an offer by Google to also have a desk in their TechHub offices in London’s Old Street, the future is looking exceptionally bright for Ben.
Garage that trained FTSE up, pound apprentices forced down and oil flat to shut up shop A GARAGE business in Paddock Wood which offered unemployed young people the chance to train for a career in mechanics has closed, just three years after it was established. Auto22 was set up by the national charity Catch22 to offer apprenticeships to disadvantaged young people. The West Kent branch of the enterprise was the second to be set up following the establishment of the first garage in Gravesend, North Kent, in 2010. The project for training young mechanics had been widely praised, and the Paddock Wood branch received a visit from Princess Anne in 2013 – its first year of operation. However, continuing the business became unviable due to a ‘competitive’ local market and changes to the motor industry, leading those running the garages to make the tough choice to close in the week before Christmas.
WEALTH management firm Brooks Macdonald has set out its financial predictions for the year ahead. The firm, which is based in Tunbridge Wells, said improving global growth prospects should benefit the FTSE 100 Index’s multinational constituents, although the current elevated valuations are being supported by a weak sterling and could be undone if the currency were to appreciate. The uncertainty surrounding Brexit will weigh on the more domestically-focused FTSE 250 Index, although expectations of higher fiscal spending and looser financial conditions post-Brexit should benefit FTSE 250 companies more than the large global companies in the FTSE 100 Index. Head of Research Richard Larner also said sterling was expected to remain ‘under pressure’ against the dollar next year, but improve against the euro if political populism gains momentum on the Continent. Oil prices will remain region of 50-60 dollars a barrel as cuts from an increasingly less influential OPEC are balanced out by the ramping up of shale oil production in the US.
Design awards honour Tonbridge firm THIS year’s Kent Design and Development Awards has recognised Tonbridge-based Richard Hopkinson Architects for their input into a regeneration scheme in Broadstairs. The architects won the Public Buildings Education category after they drew up the plans for the redevelopment of the seaside resort’s Yarrow Hotel, owned
Wednesday 28th December 2016
by the East Kent College Estate, which opened to guests in July. The top award, Project of the Year , went to The Wing at Capelle-Ferne, a new building housing attractions to enhance the experience of those visiting the nearby Battle of Britain Memorial to World War II’s famous ‘Few’. In total, 23 developments were shortlisted for the eight catego-
ries for the awards, which took place this month. Andrew Metcalf of Tunbridge Wells PR firm Maxim, who was Master of Ceremonies at the event, said: “Some very interesting projects have been highlighted by this year’s awards, and all the finalists should be proud of the contribution they have made to the Kent landscape.”